DR. CHRISTOPH W. SENSEN

Dipl.-Biol. (Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany); Dr. rer. nat. (Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany); Professor - Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology;

Affiliations: Member - Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute for Child and Maternal Health.  Currently the iCORE/Sun Microsystems Industrial Chair on Applied Bioinformatics.

Research Interests:

Four-dimensional modeling of genetic diseases and developmental patterns (funded by Genome Canada/ Genome Alberta):
This Genome Canada-funded project explores the use of spatio-temporal models in connection with the study of genetic diseases and developmental patterns in humans and animal models. With industrial partners, we have build a top-down surface model of the human anatomy (CAVEman), which is at the heart of the project. We are now building models for mice and rats as well, developing a toolkit for the rapid construction of surface models from volumetric data.

Integrated and Distributed Bioinformatics Platform for Genome Canada:
Dr. Sensen is the Principal Investigator of this Genome Canada platform. Currently, the platform serves several Genome Canada-funded projects, such as the one listed above, Designing Oilseeds for Tomorrow and five new projects, which will begin on Sept. 1st, ranging from the characterization of plant ESTs to the high-throughput sequence analysis of metagenomic information from drill cores from the Alberta oil sands. The platform provides access to computational infrastructure, a help desk, custom programming capabilities, Web services and has a dedicated Bioinformatics Training component. Tools such as MAGPIE and Bluejay are being developed using platform resources.

Characterizing the Host Response in Chronic Diseases:
We are studying the use of DNA sequences derived from circulating nucleic acids in the blood as markers for the progress of chronic diseases. We recently completed a study on Chronic Wasting Disease in Elk and expect to apply our methods to other diseases, such as BSE and chronic human diseases such as cancer or diabetes shortly.

Personnel:

For a complete list of the people in the Sensen laboratory, see http://www.visualgenomics.ca/

View Pub Med for Recent publications & abstracts

Recent Publications:

•  Antranikian G., Ruepp A., Gordon P.M.K., Ballschmiter A., Zibat A., Sensen C.W., Frishman D., Liebl W., Klenk H.-P. (2009) Rapid access to genes of biotechnologically useful enzymes by partial genome sequencing: the thermoalkaliphile Anaerobranca gottschalkii. Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology 16:81-90
• Soh J., Turinsky A.L., Trinh Q.M., Chang J., Sabhaney A., Dong X., Gordon P.M.K., Janzen R.P.W., Hau D., Wishart D.S., Sensen C.W. (2009) Spatiotemporal Integration of Molecular and Anatomical Data in Virtual Reality using Semantic Mapping. Int. J. Nanomedicine 4:79-89 (online)
• Toronto International Data Release Workshop Authors, Birney E., Hudson T.J., Green E.D., Gunter C., Eddy S., Rogers J., Harris J.R., Ehrlich S.D., Apweiler R., Austin C.P., Berglund L., Bobrow M., Bountra C., Brookes A.J., Cambon-Thomsen A., Carter N.P., Chishold R.L., Contreras J.L., Cooke R.M., Crosby W.L., Dewar K., Durbin R., Dyke S.O., Ecker J.R., Ei Emam K., Feuk L., Gabriel S.B., Gallacher J., Gelbart W.M., Granell A., Guarner F., Hubbard T., Jackson S.A., Jennings J.L., Joly Y., Jones S.M., Kaye J., Kennedy K.L., Knoppers B.M., Kyrpides N.C., Lowrance W.W., Luo J., MacKay J.J., Martin-Riveira L., McCombie W.R., McPherson J.D., Miller L., Miller W., Moerman D., Mooser V., Morton C.C., Ostell J.M., Oellette B.F., Parkhill J., Raina P.S., Rawlings C., Scherer S.E., Scherer S.W., Schofield P.N., Sensen C.W., Stodden V.C., Sussman M.R., Tanaka T., Thornton J., Tsunoda T., Valle D., Vuorio E.I., Walker N.M., Wallace S., Weinstock G., Whitman W.B., Worley K.C., Wu J., Yu J. (2009) Prepubication data sharing. Nature 461:168-170
  2008
•  Borowski K., Soh J., Sensen C.W. (2008) Visual Comparison of Multiple Gene Expression Datasets in a Genomic Context. Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics 5:1-10 (online)
• Caffrey S.M., Park H.-S., Been J., Gordon P., Sensen C.W., Voordouw G. (2008) Gene expression of the sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough grown on an iron electrode under cathodic protection conditions. Applied Environmental Microbiology 74:2404-2413 (online)
• Gordon P.M.K., Schütz E., Beck J., Urnovitz H.B., Graham C., Clark R., Dudas S., Czub S., Sensen M., Brenig B., Groschup M.H., Church R.B., Sensen C.W. (2008) Disease-Specific Motifs can be identified in Circulating Nucleic Acids from live Elk and Cattle infected with Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies. Nuc. Ac. Res. 37:550-556 (online)
• Gordon P.M.K., Soliman M.A., Bose P., Trinh Q., Sensen C.W., Riabowol K. (2008) Interspecies data mining to predict novel protein-protein interactions in human. BMC Genomics 18:426 (online)
• Ruan Y., Sensen C.W., van der Hoorn F.A. (2008) A Novel Group of Multi-GAP-Domain Proteins. Molecular Reproduction and Development 75:1578-1589
• Soh J., Gordon P.M.K., Taschuk M.L., Dong A., Ah-Seng A.C., Turinsky A.L., Sensen C.W. (2008) Bluejay 1.0: genome browsing and comparison with rich customization provision and dynamic resource linking. BMC Bioinformatics 9:450 (online)
• Turinsky A.L., Fanea E., Trinh Q., Dong X., Shu X., Stromer J.N., Wat S., Hallgrímsson B., Hill J.W., Edwards C., Grosenik B., Yajima M., Sensen C.W. (2008) CAVEman: Standardized Anatomical Context for Biomedical Data Mapping. Anatomical Science Education 1:10-18 (online)
• Turinsky A.L., Fanea E., Trinh Q., Dong X., Stromer J.N., Shu X., Wat S., Hallgrímsson B., Hill J.W., Edwards C., Grosenik B., Yajima M., Sensen C.W. (2008) Integration of Genomic and Medical Data into a 3D Atlas of Human Anatomy. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 132:526-531
• Wilkinson M.D., Senger M., Kawas E., Bruskiewich R., Carrere S., Gouzy J., Noirot C., Bardou P., Ng A., Haase D., de Andres Saiz E., Wang D., Gibbons F., Gordon P.M.K., Sensen C.W., Rodgriguez Carrasco J.M., Fernández J.M., Shen L., Links M., Ng M., Opushneva N., Neerincx P., Ernst R., Twigger S., Usadel B., Good B., Wong Y., Stein L., Crosby W., Karlsson J., Royo R., Párraga I., Ramirez S., Gelpi J.L., Trelles O., Pisano D.G., Jimenez N., Kerhornou A., Rosset R., Zamacola L., Tarraga J., Huerta-Cepas J., Carazo J.M., Dopazo J., Guigo R., Navarro A., Orozco M., Valencia A., Claros G., Perez-Pulido A., Rojano M.M., Fernandez-Santa Cruz R., Navas I., Schiltz G., Farmer A., Gessler D., Schoof H., Groscurth A. (2008) Interoperability with Moby 1.0 - It's Better than Sharing Your Toothbrush! Brief. Bioinform. 9:220-231
• Cooper D.M.L., Thomas C.D., Clement J.G., Turinsky A.L., Sensen C.W., Hallgrímsson B. (2007) Age-dependent change in the 3D structure of cortical porosity at the human femoral midshaft. Bone 40:957-965  
• Gordon P.M.K., Trinh Q., Sensen C.W. (2007) Semantic Web Service Provision: a Realistic Framework for Bioinformatics Programmers. Bioinformatics 23:1178-1180
• Cooper D.M.L., Turinsky A.L., Sensen C.W., Hallgrímsson B. (2007) Effect of Voxel Size on 3D Micro-CT Analysis of Cortical Bone Porosity. Calcified Tissue International 80:211-219
• Ruecker N.J., Braithwaite S.L., Topp E., Edge T., Lapen D.R., Wilkes G., Robertson W., Medeiros D., Sensen C.W., Neumann N.F. (2007) Tracking Host Sources of Cryptosporidium spp. in Raw Water for Improved Health Risk Assessment. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 73:3945-3957
• Fröls S., Gordon P.M.K., Arcellana Panlilio M., Schleper C., Sensen C.W. (2007) Elucidating the transcription cycle of the UV-inducible hyperthermophilic archaeal virus SSV1 by DNA microarrays. Virology 15:48-59
• Gordon P.M.K., Sensen C.W. (2007) Seahawk: moving beyond HTML in Web-based bioinformatics analysis. BMC Bioinformatics 18:208
• Fröls S., Gordon P.M.K., Arcellana Panlilio M., Duggin I.G., Bell S.D., Sensen C.W., Schleper C. (2007) Response of the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus to UV damage. J. Bacteriol. 189:8708-8718
• Turinsky A.L., Fanea E., Trinh Q., Dong X., Shu X., Stromer J.N., Wat S., Hallgrímsson B., Hill J.W., Edwards C., Grosenik B., Yajima M., Sensen C.W. (2008) CAVEman: Standardized Anatomical Context for Biomedical Data Mapping. Anatomical Science Education 1:10-18
• Caffrey S.M., Park H.-S., Been J., Gordon P., Sensen C.W., Voordouw G. (2008) Gene expression of the sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough grown on an iron electrode under cathodic protection conditions. Applied Environmental Microbiology 74:2404-2413
• Ruan Y., Sensen C.W., van der Hoorn F.A. (2008) A Novel Group of Multi-GAP-Domain Proteins. Molecular Reproduction and Development 75:1578-1589
• Wilkinson M.D., Senger M., Kawas E., Bruskiewich R., Carrere S., Gouzy J., Noirot C., Bardou P., Ng A., Haase D., de Andres Saiz E., Wang D., Gibbons F., Gordon P.M.K., Sensen C.W., Rodgriguez Carrasco J.M., Fernández J.M., Shen L., Links M., Ng M., Opushneva N., Neerincx P., Ernst R., Twigger S., Usadel B., Good B., Wong Y., Stein L., Crosby W., Karlsson J., Royo R., Párraga I., Ramirez S., Gelpi J.L., Trelles O., Pisano D.G., Jimenez N., Kerhornou A., Rosset R., Zamacola L., Tarraga J., Huerta-Cepas J., Carazo J.M., Dopazo J., Guigo R., Navarro A., Orozco M., Valencia A., Claros G., Perez-Pulido A., Rojano M.M., Fernandez-Santa Cruz R., Navas I., Schiltz G., Farmer A., Gessler D., Schoof H., Groscurth A. (2008) Interoperability with Moby 1.0 - It's Better than Sharing Your Toothbrush! Brief. Bioinform. 9:220-231
• Turinsky A.L., Fanea E., Trinh Q., Dong X., Stromer J.N., Shu X., Wat S., Hallgrímsson B., Hill J.W., Edwards C., Grosenik B., Yajima M., Sensen C.W. (2008) Integration of Genomic and Medical Data into a 3D Atlas of Human Anatomy. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 132:526-531
• Borowski K., Soh J., Sensen C.W. (2008) Visual Comparison of Multiple Gene Expression Datasets in a Genomic Context. Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics 5:1-10
• Gordon P.M.K., Soliman M.A., Bose P., Trinh Q., Sensen C.W., Riabowol K. (2008) Interspecies data mining to predict novel protein-protein interactions in human. BMC Genomics 18:426
• Soh J., Gordon P.M.K., Taschuk M.L., Dong A., Ah-Seng A.C., Turinsky A.L., Sensen C.W. (2008) Bluejay 1.0: genome browsing and comparison with rich customization provision and dynamic resource linking. BMC Bioinformatics 9:450
• Gordon P.M.K., Schütz E., Beck J., Urnovitz H.B., Graham C., Clark R., Dudas S., Czub S., Sensen M., Brenig B., Groschup M.H., Church R.B., Sensen C.W. (2008) Disease-Specific Motifs can be identified in Circulating Nucleic Acids from live Elk and Cattle infected with Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies. Nuc. Ac. Res. 37:550-556
• Antranikian G., Ruepp A., Gordon P.M.K., Ballschmiter A., Zibat A., Sensen C.W., Frishman D., Liebl W., Klenk H.-P. (2009) Rapid access to genes of biotechnologically useful enzymes by partial genome sequencing: the thermoalkaliphile Anaerobranca gottschalkii. Journal of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology 16:81-90
• Soh J., Turinsky A.L., Trinh Q.M., Chang J., Sabhaney A., Dong X., Gordon P.M.K., Janzen R.P.W., Hau D., Wishart D.S., Sensen C.W. (2009) Spatiotemporal Integration of Molecular and Anatomical Data in Virtual Reality using Semantic Mapping. Int. J. Nanomedicine 4:79-89

Contact Information:

The University of Calgary,
Faculty of Medicine,
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology,
Room 1150 Health Sciences Centre,
3330 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary,
Alberta Canada T2N 4N1
Phone: (403) 220-4301;
Fax: (403) 210-9538
E-mail: csensen@ucalgary.ca.